Can I ask why Creative Business Unit 3 are radio silent on the issue of Forked Tower?

[Daralii]

Well if that's the case they're going to lose a lot of casuals. Bozja was fun this in more ways than one isn't. Not that hard to pass up forked tower for me but the overall mechs and pacing of the game is poorly done in my opinion or at least not to my tastes. I rarely go there and this is from someone with 8 marbles and 12 Cerebus and 7 Frans bikes.

The population's been in freefall for almost a year at this point. CS3 either doesn't care and are confident that people will stay subscribed and buying outfits, are too rigid and/or incompetent to make any necessary changes, or are saving the necessary changes to be a selling point of the next expansion. It's all very reminiscent of both times WoW was accelerating to a near-collapse.

[Gurgeh]

I hope not. It's not going to work for SE. They are not prepared, will not be philosophically able to, make the same scale and depth of changes. Activision will have spend a lot of money. Activision scale changes would require SE to "throw the Ultimate raider out with the bath water", (and I suspect the presumably staunchly conservative JP player). They could recover gradually, its never going to be WoW scale renaissance.

[ZephyrMenodora]

I really was enjoying OC and sang it's praises while working on getting my relic done and randomly levelling the Phantom Jobs.

Then I learned how Forked Tower is designed and I simply just lost all interest in playing in OC at this point.

I'm disappointed that casual players are unable to pug this part of the story, essentially cutting us off of half of the OC experience. Why would I bother upgrading my OC gear and levelling more phantom jobs when it's unlikely I'll ever get to do anything meaningful that I wasn't able to do day 1 in the overland zone? I thought I was working towards being useful in FT but in it's current iteration I lost all motivation and this has left a sour taste in my mouth.

What I am left with now is an Endwalker-esque feeling where I do dailies and get the rest of my tomestone relics...

[Kuroka]

Whats worst is, all the grind might be pointless for the next part... till there we might need new gear for bonus, the next sett will have like ilvl 800+...

[RyomaUchi]

Why is a savage level raid in the first tier of the Relic? BA was at the end for the 4th tier. Castrum, Delibrium and Dalraidia were all set for Casual Players in my view. DRS was optional and is one I still took many of my alts through.

A bird told me that the hardcore raiders usually forget to unsub.

[Innio]

As for me developers need to move away from Alliance raids in this kind of content, especially where 1 of 48 people can wipe all others. Savage level inside the instances where you can be joined by anyone - this is absurd on the part of the developers.
If you want a dungeon inside an instance:
1. Make mechanics more gentle where because of 1-10 people on had to vayp the whole dungeon. Fewer mechanics where everyone has to do their own mechanics and where the wipe did not depend on that action. If a person died, it was possible to res and continue on.
2. Make then a tower for 8-16 people. For each party opened the choice to go to 8 or 16. Let's say if you need 16 people, the first group creates a list of entry, the other joins the first and the one who created the zone runs it as a normal dungeon. To collect such a number of players is easier and inside the instance. And there will be fewer problems with someone coming to you.
But the developers just make a savaga level dungeon, throw it in the player's face - and the community around such dungeons becomes so toxic that it becomes unrealistic and nasty to get into (like it was with chaotic). OC was created as a location for every level of player from casuals to hardcore players, and in the end 90% of players can't get through all the content, can't get to the point of collecting notes for the book.

[Raikai]

As for me developers need to move away from Alliance raids in this kind of content, especially where 1 of 48 people can wipe all others. Savage level inside the instances where you can be joined by anyone - this is absurd on the part of the developers.
If you want a dungeon inside an instance:
1. Make mechanics more gentle where because of 1-10 people on had to vayp the whole dungeon. Fewer mechanics where everyone has to do their own mechanics and where the wipe did not depend on that action. If a person died, it was possible to res and continue on.
2. Make then a tower for 8-16 people. For each party opened the choice to go to 8 or 16. Let's say if you need 16 people, the first group creates a list of entry, the other joins the first and the one who created the zone runs it as a normal dungeon. To collect such a number of players is easier and inside the instance. And there will be fewer problems with someone coming to you.
But the developers just make a savaga level dungeon, throw it in the player's face - and the community around such dungeons becomes so toxic that it becomes unrealistic and nasty to get into (like it was with chaotic). OC was created as a location for every level of player from casuals to hardcore players, and in the end 90% of players can't get through all the content, can't get to the point of collecting notes for the book.

Honestly, this whole debacle feels like corrupt-a-wish.

They grant more stuff akin to EX/Savage difficulties outside of those. Yay... But you'll have to deal with random people, whom you cannot control, making the whole thing unfeasible.

Even in their internal limited testing environments, It's hard to believe that such obvious thing could've been overlooked by somebody experienced as Yoshida.

[Daralii]

Honestly, this whole debacle feels like corrupt-a-wish.

They grant more stuff akin to EX/Savage difficulties outside of those. Yay... But you'll have to deal with random people, whom you cannot control, making the whole thing unfeasible.

Even in their internal limited testing environments, It's hard to believe that such obvious thing could've been overlooked by somebody experienced as Yoshida.

Yoshida's admitted that he barely does anything more involved than checking if the lights are still on. He's busy with managerial work, other projects, and whatever he does for the not-board of directors.

[Amarande]

Well if that's the case they're going to lose a lot of casuals.

Yeahhhh ... I've been getting this feeling a lot myself (although I didn't do Bozja much, the setback mechanic being when you die rather than when you fail to get a rez made things a good jot more stressful and I'm certainly glad that OC at least brought back the wild and free Eureka mechanic in this regard).

Either that, or their definition of "casual" has perhaps shifted and unfortunately us longtimers get caught in the ... Interpopulational Rift: their most important focuses possibly now being on hardcore raiders and sprouts.

Actually this last theory makes a lot of sense to me on reflection. The game's pacing more or less leaves us in an awkward spot, honestly.

Casual play thrives pretty heavily on the "new friend join me in this game" angle, and raids are just not really a priority from that point of view: unlike a fast-burn game like WoW where you better have accessible raids that the vet can readily help a new player along in or their options are basically to develop altitis or quit after the first month's sub, a month into XIV they're probably still reaching for the Heavensward emergency tissue box. It's a LONG time after they get off the wagon before they are remotely ready to join you or I in any endgame content ... so SE may have begun to consider endgame content accessibility a lower priority as a result.

(I checked my own achievements, FWIW, and even as a fairly heavy player, a month after I started this character I was just wrapping up post-HW and heading into Stormblood, so this is about right)

the raid is not part of the relic at all :shrug:

True, though it's still up in the air if it will be a required step in order to upgrade OC gear going into North Horn (we might get a brand new set of gear then like with Pyros, but they could throw a further curveball and require the Arcanaut +2 in order to upgrade into NH steps ...)

and the community around such dungeons becomes so toxic that it becomes unrealistic and nasty to get into (like it was with chaotic).

On the Crystal based Discord I am in it seems fairly open and friendly community wise with little or no active toxicity, but there are still some grave logistical issues.

Runs fill fast (mostly advanced sign ups rather than the Discord queue bot that was used for BA when I was on Aether in StB) so it can be difficult to find one, especially in today's world where prog points are expected to be much more strictly adhered to. (BA had MUCH less difficulty with this latter, I still remember tearfully the time we had a very nervous first timer with us in one of the midnight Aether runs who was glad for our kindness and reassuring and she came so very close to clearing when unfortunately during Ozma an AoE slip clipped her and, yet lacking the protection of +2 gear, she was slightly too fragile to take the damage and was whisked away by the next Black Hole before we could get her back up)

I'm also not sure how reliably runs actually happen after planning, especially since I've seen scheduled runs listed literally a half hour apart from one another on the same datacenter - the way gathering 6 groups into one instance and Auroral Mirage windows work, this seems way too optimistic for people to not be stepping on each other's toes ...

[Gurgeh]

... I still remember tearfully the time we had a very nervous first timer with us in one of the midnight Aether runs who was glad for our kindness and reassuring and she came so very close to clearing when unfortunately during Ozma an AoE slip clipped her and, yet lacking the protection of +2 gear, she was slightly too fragile to take the damage and was whisked away by the next Black Hole before we could get her back up)
...

This was the game I remember. The community I remember, people cared, and you used to see it reflected everywhere and that is just fully gone now. Certainly in the EU.
No apologies the "it's fair that you shouldn't 'snipe' 'our' FT instance" is just appalling. What horrible, selfish people.
The people crying 'sniper' are all the same people who cried 'progliar' during Chaotic, it's all the same.
Low empathy borderline sociopaths.

I recently travelled to Materia because I just wanted to play some instances for old times sake before my sub runs out, but I didn't feel like talking to my FC, and I didn't feel like ignoring them either.
1st dungeon l, very first one, and I was not expecting it... was 'wonderful'.
People said hi. I apologised for not knowing the instance too well even though I was mentor. I got 'encouragement' from the healer, despite my being mentor. There was a DPS (BLM) dieing quite a bit but we were all encouraging each other. It - was - great!
(then i had to log off)
THAT used to be 2/3 dungeon experiences in this game, now I honestly can't remember the last time I had that 'level' of feeling I was playing with friends I had something in common with on EU, save for back around EW MSQ, when Chaos started imploding, thanks to raiding travel, and casuals started losing interest.

And I'm gonna say it... you know what's coming...
You know what's different about Materia?
Yes, a low concentration, a lack of, high-end players who have been naturally selected for being nasty selfish cnts, who don't even want to be in your instance for its own sake, in the first place, and instantly resent 'anyone' that slows them down, and does not play the dungeon the way they do, which is to try get out ASAP from the moment they got in..

("progliar, progliar"
go fk yourselves.)